China activist lawyer's wife seeks his whereabouts

BEIJING 
The wife of an activist Chinese lawyer missing for more than a year challenged claims by authorities in China that he was working in a remote western region of the country and had been in touch with relatives, a human rights group said Thursday.

The case of Gao Zhisheng, one of China's most daring lawyers, has drawn international attention for the unusual length of his disappearance, and for earlier reports of torture he said he faced from security forces.

"For a very long time I have not heard from him, and I do not know where he is now," Gao's wife, Geng He, said in a statement released by the New York-based group Human Rights in China.

Her statement comes after a San Francisco-based human rights group, the Dui Hua Foundation, said last week it was told by the Chinese Embassy in Washington that Gao was working in Urumqi, capital of western China's Xinjiang region, and had been in touch with his wife and relatives.

Dui Hua did not say what kind of work Gao was allegedly doing or where he was staying. Urumqi is about 1,800 miles (2,880 kilometers) west of Beijing.

"Unless the Chinese government truly makes good on what it is declaring to the outside world and allows my husband to get in contact with me directly, I have no way of verifying his current whereabouts and whether he is safe and free," Geng said.

Gao's brother, Gao Zhiyi, has said he doesn't know where his brother was and had no luck getting information from Beijing police.

Geng and her two children now live in the United States after being accepted as refugees. They resorted to using human traffickers last year to smuggle them out of China, where they faced endless police harassment because of Gao's activism. Gao disappeared shortly after his family's escape.

Officials have been previously vague on his whereabouts, with a policeman telling Gao Zhiyi that his brother "went missing," and a Foreign Ministry official last month saying the lawyer "is where he should be." Chinese state-run media have not mentioned the case.